Today partial personalization of content distributed to viewers via a multimedia distribution network, such as e.g. a TV distribution network, can be achieved by using specialized hardware on the viewer's side. A major disadvantage with such an approach is that it is often disruptive to the viewer's Quality of Experience (QoE).
Personalization without requiring any specialized equipment on the user viewer's side has not yet been practically exhibited, due to at least the following problems.
Real time estimation of the identity of the current viewer/s is extremely difficult and costly, if not impossible, considering presently known technique.
Personal preferences are hard to estimate, and only rough estimations, typically on the basis of demographic, economic and/or social factors, may be obtained.
Households might have more than one TV viewer with different personal preferences. The placement of a TV advertisement or a TV program in any of the above scenarios is not optimal because it will not enable a content provider to meet the needs of each individual viewer. A mechanism guarantying that the individual needs are fulfilled and personal preferences are met would be optimal. The techniques employed today for the selection of the advertisements or TV programs to be shown for different viewers are not optimal due to the information asymmetry between the viewers and the content providers, or advertising companies.
The existing techniques cannot achieve a perfect mapping between the viewer's preferences and the content to be delivered to viewers, in response to selections made by the viewers, because primarily the content provider or advertiser does neither know the number of viewers per household, their daily routines regarding the time of the day spend in front of the TV, nor their preferences. Some of these parameters can only be estimated with a limited probability, using presently available technique.
One approach to use for trying to solve at least some of the problems mentioned above is to apply user-log-files, or diaries, which are typically edited by a selected group of viewers, or consumers, over a specified time interval, in order to document a user behavior of a constellation of users of a household. This approach has considerable deficiencies when it comes to accuracy, since it rely on a high grade of participation and activity of the participating viewers for obtaining accurate representation of their daily habits, and additionally it always has an intrinsic time threshold, typically defined as 15 minutes intervals, below which no viewer activity is recorded.
Another known method for documenting a user behavior is to use set-meters, which are configured to passively record the set-tunings of a household and to transmit these recordings to a central unit.
Yet another known user behavior documentation method rely on the so-called people-meter, where selected households are equipped with small set-to-boxes, specially adapted for documentation purposes. When a viewer starts watching programs on a TV set that is equipped with a people-meter, the viewer has to actively press a button on the people-meter, or on a corresponding remote control, in order to be able to indicate his/her identity. An alternative to people-meter, called Portable People-Meter (PPM) is provides a portable alternative, with a device that can be worn by an individual that captures inaudible signals embedded in an audio stream that is received by a TV set of the household.
Another problem that relates to the problem of trying to picture a user's behavior in the present context is that non-intrusive solutions to the mentioned problems may be confronted by selecting a representative population of viewers on the basis of demographic, economic and/or social factors, whereas intrusive techniques may employ call-ins and/or questioners.
There are a number of additional problems with using any of the suggested solutions, some of which are presented below.
Having a registering device installed at a household infringes a person's privacy. Another problem is that any kind of activity required by a viewer, such as e.g. filling in some kind of form, pushing buttons, or answering telephone calls, disturbs the user experience of the viewer. In addition, practically all known methods are relatively costly to set up and to maintain, considering the equipment and/or required man-hours.
Since the viewers that have been selected to participate in a user behavior survey always represent a limited group of all viewers, this group will be more or less representative. How representative a selected group actually is may be very difficult to estimate. There is also a large risk of incomplete coverage, where the user behavior of an important group of viewers cannot be registered.